Kate: Hi, and welcome to Property Management and Me, a series from Property Me, bringing quick tips and insights. that will make a difference to your everyday property management practice. I'm your host Kate Sunnell and today I'm joined by Hermione Hart from Sidekick Consulting. I've spoken to a lot of property management business owners and high performing BDMs who really credit their success to Hermione's coaching.
If you've downloaded any of her guides from the Sidekick website you'll know that she's just full of gold and I'm really excited to be chatting with her around how understanding buyer psychology can help you win more business without dropping your fee. Welcome, Hermione.
Hermione: Hi, Kate. Thank you so much. What a beautiful introduction.
I sound pretty good there.
Kate: You do. You definitely have a lot of insight to offer, so we are really excited to have you chatting here today. There are a host of ways that agencies can determine the fees and the value that they provide for clients. I'd say the most typical being that they just match local area rates or they sort of sit somewhere in the middle.
How does this concept vary from using buyer psychology to, I suppose, pitch value for the fees, and, uh, to influence how a client can see value for your services?
Hermione: Yes, like an agency usually chooses a set of fees and I've had conversations with some startup business owners where it's literally, as you say, picking that number out of the air and doing what the other agencies are doing.
But there's definitely some businesses that want to be more of that premium end service and charge higher fees. I feel that for that to be able to happen, it really is important to understand why, why people buy and why investors would pay more to be able to then command those higher fees.
Kate: So a lot of agencies will work in the reverse. They'll think, what's our unique selling point? What's our value proposition? And how can we communicate that from the get go? But your perspective is just taking a moment to understand the problems and the pain points from the client and then having the conversation centered around that.
Hermione: Yeah, so the way I teach like selling and BDM and growth is it's a very consultative based approach. So it's sort of needs based selling. So let's say you have a lead. You've got a client that you're going out to see instead of just sitting down. pitching and telling them all the reasons why you're amazing. It's actually really taking that first part of that conversation into discovery mode.
So it's asking several types of questions to really dig deeper to find out what do they need? Where are they at? What's important to them? What's been a problem or a pain point for them in the past? And then once you're able to identify what those pain points are, what their frustrations have been and what they're really looking to achieve and what they really want.
Like, then you can actually be really crafty and fine tuning your offering and your points of difference to specifically meet those needs. And then it's much easier, A, to convert, but B, to command that higher fee, because you're showing them exactly how your service is going to meet their needs. Does that make sense?
Kate: Sure. So what are some of the ways that you can try and determine what the client needs? Because I imagine it's not a one size fits all, different landlords will have different experiences, different things that they're concerned about, different things that they're looking for in a property manager.
Where do you start in trying to figure that out?
Hermione: Oh, like, yeah, totally. Like, any sort of reflection, um, and research that you can do will be valuable. I mean, if you've been working in any form of new business and bringing on new clients, it's just starting to think about, say, for the owners that, you know, maybe have changed agencies and come across to you.
Like what were those reasons why, you know, like what were the reasons why they weren't happy with their previous agent? Was it that they didn't get callbacks? Was it that, um, you know, that they didn't feel valued? Was it that their property sat on the market ages, not being leased? Like you'll start to know what some of them generally are, but again, it's asking that specific client because you're going to keep learning.
There's going to be more things. You're gonna be, wow. I didn't realize that was. That's a reason why people change agencies. Now I can not only bring that into my questioning and conversations, I can actually then pull that into my marketing and my social media to speak to those points when I'm marketing for new leads.
So definitely looking at why people have been coming to you. And then for the people who are, you know, maybe not coming from another agency, it's really kind of trying to figure out for them, for them, it's like, well, what would they be really trying to achieve if they're wanting to get you to rent out their property?
What is it that they're ideally looking for? It's not about what marketing strategies you've got. It's about for that owner. They want to get the best possible tenant in their property. Who's going to look after it. They're going to want to have. The shortest amount of vacancy period that they can, um, they're going to want to get the best possible rent for the marketplace.
And like, they're going to want someone who is just going to take care of all of that for them. So they don't have to stress or worry, and it's going to communicate with them. So it's like, you can then look at that, uh, that whole scenario as like, what does the client actually want out of the outcomes of that versus what are the features of what you're trying to sell?
So those are like, yeah, the outcomes and the benefits versus the if that makes sense. And honestly, it's the more questions that you can ask and the more actively you can listen and learn, like the better you'll actually get at selling, like the more you can go, right. Okay. So from the questions I've just asked, what I'm hearing is that X, Y, Z is really important to you.
Is that right? Is there anything that I've missed? Oh, well, actually this is important. Okay, great. Now I have a full clear picture of exactly what's important to you. So if I can deliver that with our service, like then would you be happy to go ahead and use us? Yes. Yeah, like that sounds great, you know, it's starting to, like, make them feel heard, make them feel understood and, um, help to solve their challenges and goals.
Kate: That's a really great start for someone coming into listing presentations who really wants to refine that consultative approach. Let's switch to a different angle, say you're in an agency and you want to be communicating your value to your current landlord in your portfolio. How would you go about building those relationships or really reaffirming those messages to the clients you're currently doing business with? Because, I mean, a lot of people only hear from their property managers when something goes wrong. They don't often hear or know about everything that we do behind the scenes for them.
Hermione: I know, which is so sad because property managers work so bloody hard. Um, but we're so busy doing the doing that we're not kind of like saying, hi, here's what I did this week. Or here's what we've changed or here's what we've improved. Um, so I think it's, it's a really important point to consider because the market is very competitive. So if, you know, if a client of yours doesn't feel like, you know, they're really looked after and educated and valued, Um, they might not be miserable, but they might just be in this, like, middle passive ground, and they're the ones that maybe if a cheaper option does come along, maybe they will go, Oh, well, you know, it's cheaper over there.
Can't really see the difference. So you can start to then, like, you can start to ascertain, wow, it actually is really important for us to be continually communicating the value of what we do. Um, and part of doing that is. You know, you can look at things like there's landlord newsletters and things like that, which are usually more educational.
But you know, if you are doing any form of landlord newsletters and communication, try and look at, well, how can we be communicating? What are the positive things that we've done to improve the service this month as an example, so that they can see that you're constantly adding value. But Really, at the end of the day, it comes down to the communication, the relationships, taking that consultative based approach, like listening to your clients, making them feel heard, because that, that relationship is like, that's the little, the bow that keeps them there.
Um, Sure, you know, the softwares and the systems and everything are going to be really useful, but what I really believe is that allows the property manager to spend more time actually speaking to them and showing that value and showing that they hear and they listen and that they understand not just that that client has a repair, but that that client is a whole person, they've got a whole life, they've got this property, which may be one or multiple in their portfolio that they aren't just having this property there for fun and games, that this is part of a bigger plan for their, say, retirement or succession plans or cashflow, whatever it is.
So it's not just managing maintenance and stuff. It's actually you're helping this person with the future, with their future. And so when you can connect in with that, with the clients and start to build a relationship from That perspective and hear them and help them from that perspective. Like, I don't believe that fee's going to come into it because you're going to just feel the clients are going to feel so supported and heard in that journey that they're, they're going to feel that value.
Kate: Wow. That's a lot to take away from and a lot to consider about how we're currently doing things and what we can do to show that we're adding that little bit more value. Thank you so much for joining us here today, Hermione. If there's one or two things that you'd want listeners to take away as key points, what would they be?
Hermione: The first thing that popped into my head is that questions hold the answers. So the more questions you can ask in, in all areas, especially to your clients, like the more that you're going to learn. Um, and the day that you. Like the day that you think you know it all like you need to check yourself because there's more There's always more to learn like I've been in this industry for 20 years now And I still am constantly learning and noticing different things and different behaviors so if you can try and So with everything we've kind of said today, take that growth mindset of like, Hey, wow, I can constantly be keeping learning and improving and getting better and better.
Um, you know, like you're not sort of stuck with the skills that you have, you can evolve and improve them.
Kate: I love that. That's so good. Again, thank you so much for joining us. If people want to continue the conversation around this, how do they reach out?
Hermione: Yeah, totally. Um, I'm probably, as far as the social goes, like I'm most active on Instagram.
So at Hermione Hart, um, you'll see what I'm doing each day. Got like tips and advice on there. Um, or you can head on over to the website, sidekick. net. au. Um, Don't go to com. au because that's an IT company. They do for me stuff sometimes. So psychic. net. au. Um, there's a bunch of free resources on there. Um, I've also got several, um, like training courses and programs for property managers.
There's actually an event coming up called non sleazy selling, which is me talking about that consultative based approach. So you could find that there as well. Um, but if not, there's some beautiful freebies on there that will help.
Kate: Thanks for tuning into our podcast, Property Management & Me. Here at Property Me, we're really passionate about putting these insights into practice. So if you head to our website, you can find resources from today's episode to get started.